♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
In telling the story of Woodstock '99,
it would have been really easy to structure this as a comedy,
poking fun of all things late 1990s.
The way people dressed, the music they listen to.
But, in reality, as that weekend unfolded,
it played out much more like a horror film.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
INTERVIEWER: Mike, what's the worst part
of running one of these things?
-The worst part? -INTERVIEWER: What's the worst part
about running one of them?
MICHAEL LANG: I don't know.
-INTERVIEWER: Huh? -I don't know.
-Do you dig it all? -Yeah.
I guess the biggest hassle
is dealing with the politics, you know.
There are a lot of politics involved,
-you mean with the cities? -MICHAEL: Yeah.
And you got that solved?
-Well, looks that way. -INTERVIEWER: Looks that way.
-Where are you gonna go from here? -(EXHALES)
-I mean-- -You gonna do another one?
-If it works. -(BIKE ENGINE REVVING)
♪ (ROCK MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RADIO HOST: Okay, guys. It is hot out there.
The National Weather Service has already issued
a heat advisory for your day tomorrow.
Which's gonna feel like it's a hundred degrees.
RADIO HOST 2: How's the traffic coming in?
MAN: It's bad. It's just backed up everywhere.
REPORTER: When the ball drops on the year 2000,
it will be a momentous event for the world
and for the US economy,
which is closing in on on its longest expansion ever.
The decade has been marked by strong growth,
the lowest unemployment in a generation.
And yet remarkably, little inflation.
MAN 2: How you guys doing today, welcome to Woodstock.
Where you wanna go, East Stage, West Stage, Center Stage?
-MAN 3: Center stage. -MAN 2: You wanna stay straight--
Straight ahead, okay? Straight ahead.
Okay, there you go. Yup, just leave him up here.
So have fun, okay, guys?
-You guys okay? You got your toilet paper? -Yes.
REPORTER 2: A senate panel describes Y2K
as a worldwide crisis.
-Welcome to 1999 on MTV. -Whoo!
-CARSON DALY: Limp Bizkit! -MAN: Woodstock '99.
Stay home for the trip of your life on pay per view.
INTERVIEWER: And what's the town like?
WOMAN: It's pretty cool. They're all nice.
Like, this is the first, like, concert I've been to
where everybody that you'll meet is really nice to you.
REPORTER 3: The biggest news, shortly before 1:30
this afternoon, President Clinton was impeached.
BILL CLINTON: I'm gonna say this again.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
REPORTER 4: So this is the night before, the night before
the big day kicking off, Woodstock '99.
And right here is a little bit of a party going on.
What's happening is 350,000 people
are gonna be taken care of,
by about 10,000 staff people,
all looking over the 350,000 people.
♪ (ROCK MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪ -(CROWD CHEERING)
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
The biggest concert of the year was Woodstock '94
in Saugerties, New York.
The fans not only wore the mud at the festival,
but they also ate it.
What was initially predicted to be an overhyped,
commercial disaster turned out to be nothing of the sort.
♪ ("DREAMS" BY THE CRANBERRIES PLAYING) ♪
♪ Oh, my life ♪
♪ Is changing everyday ♪
♪ In every possible way... ♪
JOHN SCHER: I get stopped all the time
by people who had the time of their life
at Woodstock '94.
There was a tone that was set, an expectation
not only of the artists that were performing
but an expectation
of how the audience would perform.
We had probably
three or four hundred thousand people at the festival.
Its biggest problem was the fences came down,
so we lost money.
Also, you know, it was raining.
It rained on and off all weekend,
it was an absolute mud pit.
People helped each other, loved each other,
no violence.
It was sort of, probably, the last hurrah
for the baby boomers and their kids.
-Welcome to Woodstock 1994! -Welcome to Woodstock 1994!
MICHAEL: When we did Woodstock '94,
the idea was to function as a bridge
between the music that we generated in the '60s
and what was contemporary in the '90s.
And it worked really well. The weekend was amazing.
JOHN: We replicated a lineup that was reasonably close
to what '69 was.
You know, the general peace, love, and harmony thing
-worked still. -♪ (DOLORES VOCALIZING) ♪
JOHN: After the festival,
Michael and I looked at each other and said,
"Okay, let's do it again in like five years."
-♪ (VOCALIZING) ♪ -(CROWD CHEERING)
MICHAEL: Woodstock seems to remain the American festival.
And I think we should do it every five years or so,
so a new generation of college
and graduating high school kids get to experience it.
JOHN: In '99 we found a perfect site
in Rome, New York.
They've got this retired air force base
that they don't know what to do with.
JOHN GRIFFO: When Woodstock Ventures
first approached us,
I recognized and realized that this was an opportunity
for the big event that a community
could put their arms around.
Bottom line is, we wanna encourage people
to buy some tickets and come to Rome, NY
the weekend of the 22nd.
It's gonna be a memorable, exciting experience.
Five years earlier, we lost the air force base here
which obviously had an enormous impact
on this community emotionally.
It was akin to economic Armageddon
because we lost thousands of jobs
and thousands of people.
JOHN: The base was ideal
because it had a lot of infrastructure things
that we would've otherwise needed to build.
JOHN: Also being a former military installation,
it was enclosed.
Griffiss was well-suited to make sure
that people came with tickets,
for a change.
JOHN: And then from a philosophic perspective,
if you look at Isaiah and the old beating swords
into plow shares,
well this was planes into plow shares.
NICK RIZZO: I can sure remember the lead up to it,
and it was really all anybody could talk about.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
NICK: There was a local bar that was called Stockyard Inn
and then they changed their name to The Woodstock Inn.
So, you know, everybody was sort of trying
to get involved and kind of capitalize on the excitement.
MATEO: Hi, I'm Mateo. I'm from Rome, New York.
Here at wonderful Griffiss Air Force Base
with a bunch of other talented artists here
who are working on the mural. Two miles long,
going all the way around this entire park.
ARTIST: These kids right here helped me create
a 500-foot mural
that's kind of a celebrated, happy version of a mosh pit.
MICHAEL: It was always our intention
to do something that was not your parents' Woodstock.
It was definitely something for the kids.
DAVID VADNAIS: You know, I had just graduated
so once I got my money for graduation
I didn't really have much of an excuse.
It was expensive, but I'm gonna see
all these bands, so it seemed like a no-brainer.
My friend Dave De Rosia was the guy
who was like, "Let's go to Woodstock."
My older brother Rob was next in line
to join in and then my younger brother
and the girl he was dating at the time wanted to go, too.
It was gonna be awesome.
MIKE ELLING: When I saw the lineup, I was like,
"Dude, I am going to this."
Like, I can't imagine a better lineup
for the music that I love right now
and they're all in one place
and it's called Woodstock and I get to go.
DAVID: Everybody wanted to see Kid Rock.
-KEN HINELY: DMX. -MIKE: Korn. Metallica.
KEN: Insane Clown Posse?
JESSICA LEVIN: Oh! Rage Against the Machine!
KEN: And Limp Bizkit.
In 1999, those guys were massive.
JESSICA: I remember I had to beg my parents.
I was working at a pizzeria and I remember
being on the phone with him and being like,
"Dad, I'll go for you. I mean
you didn't get to go to '69, I'll go to '99."
I mean I'm graduating like let's just go do this,
this is gonna be... (BLOWS) ...like the big send off,
you know? It's Woodstock.
(CROWD CHEERING)
JAMES BROWN: One, two, three, four
♪ ("GET ON UP" BY JAMES BROWN PLAYING) ♪
-♪ Get up, get on up ♪ -♪ Get on up ♪
♪ Stay on the scene ♪
-♪ Get on up, get on up ♪ -♪ Like a sex machine ♪
♪ Get up ♪
DAVID: I remember vividly like coming up over the hill,
and you're just-- you're blown away, right?
The thing is huge and there's people everywhere.
There's people dressed ridiculously
or not dressed at all.
And I was thinking like,
"How did this many people already get in here?"
-Two lanes, two lanes! -MAN: We got a founder.
Let's go!
One day this is gonna be on some sort of documentary.
MAN 2: Hey Vince, you got it all?
Motherfucking Woodstock, baby.
BEN ABT: Security was relatively minimal.
Especially compared to the TSA days of today.
MAN 3: Our friend Andy wound up making friends
with the security guards up front.
And all the beer that they were taking away from people
and all the chairs that they were taking away
from people, are right here right now.
BEN: The peace patrol, who were monitoring the gates,
they just kinda looked in your stuff,
said, "All right, you're good to go."
Which immediately made me think,
"Wow, I think a bunch of people have a lot of drugs here."
JOHN: We expanded Woodstock '99 by the pay-per-view
and the MTV coverage.
People running around topless and...
JOHN: In those days, MTV held the heartbeat
of the younger generation in their palm.
TARIQ TROTTER: When we performed,
it was like 1000 degrees.
Somehow, the way my mind worked, was that
the fact that the sweater I had on didn't have sleeves
was going to... (CHUCKLES)
...like that was gonna make a difference
in the temperature on stage.
LIZ POLAY-WETTENGEL: I remember it being really hot
and I remember a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion.
People didn't know where they were supposed to go
and there was a lot of white men.
A lot of white boys I should say.
It felt really young. Lotta of white boys
wearing backwards baseball caps.
-♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪ -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JOURNALIST: (OVER PA)
Our hopes are that people have as good time this weekend
as they did at Saugerties
and as they did in 1969 in Bethel.
I think this is a better facility
than any place we've been.
So we think that this has the potential to be, you know,
one of the best things we've ever done.
And be an incredible weekend for everybody who joins us.
JOURNALIST: So, given the distance between the stages,
any advice for people who are here for the music?
Yeah, yeah.
That's true. It's about two-thirds of a mile.
And in fact we have over a 100 acts,
so you're not gonna be able to see everything.
There's a tremendous amount to do,
you're not gonna run out of things to do.
You can go 24 hours a day,
we're open all day and all night.
We've designed a number of things in addition
to the two main stages.
There's an emerging artist stage,
there's the rave for those who like to stay up all night
and are more nocturnal than I am.
There is the 24-hour-a-day film festival,
there's the sports park,
there are a lot of non-for-profit booths
that political conversation and dialogue can take place.
This is already very much taken shape of its own city.
MAUREEN CALAHAN: I mean, you had two main stages
that were a mile from each other.
They're on a black tarmac in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, think about the irony of Woodstock on a military base.
STEVEN HYDEN: The appeal of Griffiss for the organizers
was that it was a place
that would be really hard to gate-crash
because the peace wall.
And really, I mean, like if we're talking about peace
is a wall, like, a great metaphor for that?
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHAEL: Woodstock '69 was about trying to show
that there was a better way for people to treat each other.
With more compassion and more understanding
and given the opportunity,
people will behave that way, will show their better self.
And then, I mean, what could be better,
just not being hassled by anyone, smoking a joint
under the stars listening to great music?
STEVEN: Michael Lang is who I call
the Willie Wonka of Woodstock.
He's this guy who's eternally boyish,
he's presiding over this fantasy land
that every generation of kids wants to visit.
But if you spend more than a couple minutes
at the chocolate factory, you realize that
it's not the idyllic utopia that it presents itself to be.
WESLEY MORRIS: The thing about the Woodstock mythology is
I feel like people are being selective
about how they're choosing to remember
what happened, to suit their own ends.
And the way in which we choose to romanticize,
it has everything to do with who is telling stories.
MAUREEN: Unlike the prevailing lore
would have it, Woodstock '69 was anything
but peace, love and, you know, three days
of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
It was a mess, there were riots.
The US Army had to airlift supplies in.
People died.
STEVEN: Really, it's out of sheer luck
that it didn't end up worse than it did.
And there's really some very near disasters
that happened at the original Woodstock
that nobody remembers now.
For instance, there was this group called
the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers,
who were upset about how much was being charged
for food at the festival.
So they set fire to like a dozen food stands.
The problem is that instead of learning
from the mistakes that were made,
we instead created
this romanticized mythology in the form of the documentary.
People watched the film and they chose to believe
that that's the way it really was.
(CROWD CHEERING)
♪ ("LIVE" BY SELLING THE DRAMA PLAYING) ♪
♪ And to love ♪
♪ A god and to fear a flame ♪
-Whoo! -♪ And to burn ♪
♪ A crowd that has a name ♪
♪ And to right or wrong ♪
♪ And to weak or strong ♪
♪ It is known ♪
♪ Just scream it from the wall ♪
DAVID: And we ran around just taking it all in,
everybody's fired up.
The music is great. The fans are great.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
-REPORTER: What band you here to see? -Metallica baby, yeah!
DAVID: My friend Dave wanted to see Metallica.
That was his mission.
And he was keeping a journal the whole weekend.
NARRATOR: "Add Live to the bands seen.
Very good. And Jamiroquai, not good.
I waited for people to get me a coke.
Listened to a horrible set by Andy Dick."
Here's my big fat fucking hit!
NARRATOR: "Also met Mario,
nice guy, but I got the feeling he was beat.
I, on the other hand, am doing okay, but tired.
I think we're going to head back to catch Korn and Bush.
I'll let you know.
Also boob count is too high to keep counting.
I think we're at around 11, or 14."
Make a Woodstock baby, '99!
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
I came here with three guys.
And I didn't remember where the tent was.
I had only been here like an hour.
WOMAN: This section is for anybody
who is lost or is seeking somebody else.
MAN: Hey, I'm looking for a friend of mine.
I brought him here yesterday and lost him, and he's 65.
DAVID: It is crazy to think about it.
Nobody had a cellphone. Like, or if they did,
they were very few and far between.
Back then, you really had no way
of getting in touch with somebody,
finding somebody.
It was massive, so it's not easy to find people if you got lost.
-MAN: Have you got a moment? -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-WOMAN 1: We lost her... -WOMAN 2: We lost her...
-...and now, she's found. -...and now, she's found.
I can have fun at Woodstock now.
-(WOMAN 1 CHUCKLES) -(CROWD CHEERING)
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen of Woodstock,
a special treat for you all.
The Backstreet Boys!
♪ ("EVERYBODY" BY BACKSTREET BOYS PLAYING) ♪
♪ Backstreet's back all right ♪
DAVE HOLMES: At MTV, there was like a tug of war
for the TRL charts at the time.
It was the Disney teens
versus the filthy boys in cargo shorts.
And it went that way for a couple of years.
And Woodstock '99 was sort of at,
like, the pinnacle of that.
All right, you guys ready for this?
(CROWD CHEERING)
(GRUNTS)
DAVE HOLMES: 1999 was an interesting time
because the stage was set for something new to happen.
And what did happen was teen pop.
NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and Britney and Christina
and all of them were, like, at the top of the charts.
And, as a reaction,
there was all this sort of weird,
rap inflected, aggressive rock music.
And now falling out of the number one spot,
back to number three today, here is Korn
-with "Freak on a Leash." -(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
CARSON: In the moment, TRL became
that cultural touch point for teenagers,
it was must-see TV. We had all this inner-genre
of music melding together in an hour
where that would never have happened
even a few years ago.
At the time it felt like it's awesome,
like TRL is a place like the United Nations,
like we all come together,
everybody coexisted sort of magically.
But looking back on it now,
you realize that we were really probably playing with fire.
I'm sick of the (BLEEP) Backstreet Boys on MTV Live.
I'm sick of that (BLEEP).
-You know, it's fucking (BLEEP). -Don't hold back on me.
I'm not holding back. I hate that (BLEEP).
DAVE HOLMES: It was a weird time for MTV
because it seemed like
their reputation changed, their brand changed.
The average viewer, it seemed like,
dropped five years overnight,
where it had once been
kind of a counterculture-y kind of a place,
suddenly it was like, there's Nick Jr.
and Nickelodeon and then MTV.
And Carson definitely got such a combination
of like rage and jealousy
because he was, you know, at the center of it.
So, I've never been more happy to be overshadowed
by someone than I was that weekend.
(CROWD BOOING)
Awesome this right here,
is Woodstock '99 at its finest.
DAVE HOLMES: From the second we got there,
immediately we knew
this is not a crowd that wants us here. At all.
They were mad at us
because we took their MTV away
and gave it to their little sister.
We were in trouble.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MOBY: Growing up, Woodstock in 1969
figured more prominently as like a cultural touchstone
than anything else in my life.
I can't think of anything else that even competed
with Woodstock
for cultural significance in the '70s, into the '80s,
which is why when I got asked to perform in '99,
I jumped at the chance
because it was just such an iconic name.
I mean, you think of everybody who performed
and like the number of times I've like watched the movies
and listened to the soundtrack recording,
and you realized it made it seem even more magical,
like that it happened at all.
Like, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.
But somehow it worked...
like it was as idyllic and utopian
as a gathering of 500,000 or more people
has ever been in human history.
And I know that sounds like an exaggeration,
but it really isn't.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
CAMERA MAN:
MOBY: Problem was,
see there's a little expression of ATD, attention to detail.
My name wasn't on the piece of plywood.
And there's this little piece of plywood
that welcomes you when you come in.
-CAMERA MAN: And all the artists signed-- -And all the artists' names
are on the piece of plywood and my name
wasn't on the piece of plywood and I...
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MOBY: Who's ever even heard of these bands?
MAN: All have been slashed--
Okay, let's find bands we've never even heard of.
Spitfire, Our Lady Peace, The Umbilical Brothers.
What's that one that starts with an "O?"
Buckcherry. Oleander. Buckcherry.
MOBY: I remember. I looked at the lineup
and I was like, "What is this?"
like, "How did this happen?
How is this called Woodstock?"
It would have made so much more sense
if it had been called like,
Army Base Rock '99, featuring Limp Bizkit.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MOBY: There is a sixth sense that you develop
when you spend your life, like,
going to nightclubs, going to venues.
Like, I can tell you a hundred feet away
what the energy in that venue is gonna be like.
You develop it after decades of being around venues.
We got off the bus and I was like,
"Something's not right," and this was the first day.
And I was just like, something...
You could just tell.
And, like, I started walking through the crowd,
and like everybody was angry, and everybody was hot,
and everybody was complaining.
and it had only been open for six hours.
And it was already off the rails.
(CROWD CHEERING)
MAN: I need everybody who can see me
to put your motherfucking "X"s in the air.
DMX: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Woodstock, where you at?
Where ya at?
TARIQ: DMX, at that time, he was, you know, very much
-a man of the people. -Is it on?
(CROWD CHEERING)
Is it on?
TARIQ: So I think he had a persona
that was very accessible.
His performance at Woodstock was unparalleled.
I mean, I feel like he's a man possessed in front of, you know,
hundreds of thousands of people and,
I mean, that stage was huge.
You know, the fact that he was able to sort of navigate
and to own it, I think it speaks
to what the moment meant for him.
-Oh-ho! Oh-ho! -CROWD: Oh-ho! Oh-ho!
WESLEY: It's call-and-response, right?
This is a classic, Black gospel way
of communicating in music form.
The preacher says something
the congregation knows what to say in response.
♪ ("MY NIGGAS" BY DMX PLAYING) ♪
♪ You won't take this From me, baby ♪
♪ You will not take this From me, baby ♪
♪ Come on, come on, come on My niggas ♪
♪ Some niggas That you don't wanna try ♪
-♪ My niggas ♪ -♪ Some niggas That's really do or die ♪
-♪ My niggas ♪ -♪ Will have you cowards Ready to cry ♪
-♪ My niggas ♪ -♪ Will fry ♪
-♪ My niggas ♪ -♪ Will Rob ♪
WESLEY: You could hear it.
You can hear thousands of people.
He says it, and it comes back at him
at twice the intensity.
-♪ My niggas ♪ -♪ Is God ♪
-♪ My niggas ♪ -♪ Will shine ♪
WESLEY: And what's so chilling about it is
they were ready to do it!
They were like hoping that he would do this song.
-♪ My niggas, my niggas ♪ -♪ Is fine ♪
WESLEY: You have to understand this sort of thing
wasn't happening on a regular basis in 1999.
There weren't a lot of occasions for Black rappers
to command a crowd exclusively almost of white people,
where the Black performer is essentially licensing
the people in the crowd to say this word with him.
-♪ Is dogs ♪ -♪ My nigga ♪
(CROWD CHEERING)
DMX: Where you at, baby?
WESLEY: To perform a thing that they don't believe.
Or maybe they do believe it, but if you were to ask them
what they believe, if you got each one of these guys
after the show and pulled each one of them show aside
and say, "Is it okay to say the N-word
under any circumstances?"
They would, to a person, say,
"I mean the right answer is no. Right?"
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
WESLEY: And so I'm wondering, what is it like
for the other Black people in a moment like this.
What are they thinking?
If they went with friends
who they didn't think were N-word sayers
under any circumstances,
what were those friendships like? What happened?
I mean, what was the racial dynamic
for the few non-white people who were there?
And imagine being a non-white woman,
what that experience was like for you.
(CROWD CHEERING)
ANNOUNCER: Rosie Perez!
(CROWD CHEERING)
Aw, come on now.
How are y'all feeling out there?
(CROWD CHEERING)
So...
CROWD:
I ain't showing you all shit!
(CROWD BOOING)
All right.
MAUREEN: There was a local radio station
that rolled in with a little trailer
and they had two naked girls or topless girls on top,
so it had this anachronistic, like Girls Gone Wild vibe.
(CROWD CHEERING)
DAVE MATTHEWS: Sometimes there's an abundance of things,
and sometimes there's a lack.
Today, there's an abundance of titties.
MAUREEN: If you look back, the Girls Gone Wild cohort
was a sort of reaction to the first part of the decade.
It was like "Girls, like, no. Know your place.
You're sex objects
and you're supposed to be pretty and shut up."
LIZ: I think that there's a generation of girls
that were brought up looking at Girls Gone Wild
and thinking "Wow, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
This is how real girls get men."
MAUREEN: There was just a feeling of,
"Let's put these girls back where they belong,
in their cages, in their boxes
and let's show everyone who's boss."
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STEVEN: When you watch the pay-per-view
of Woodstock '99,
it's pretty clear that the cameramen
are seeking out as much female nudity as possible.
Okay, I think you've looked at the breasts long enough now,
can you just move along now?
STEVEN: And, it just seems like,
if you're selling this pay-per-view
to a young audience that's part of what you're selling.
So the degree to which exploitation of women
was not only excused but formalized
and made part of the business plan
of Woodstock '99, that certainly created an environment
where people felt that exploiting women,
abusing women, hurting women, was gonna be okay.
And you could get away with it
if that's something you wanted to do.
WESLEY: In 1999, we were still dealing with the fallout
from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal,
where Bill Clinton drove a truck over her in trying to wiggle out
of what had actually happened. She was disposable essentially.
I mean, we were disposing of women
left and right at that point.
So you've got your Maxim subscription.
FHM. You've got Girls Gone Wild.
And it just feels like women are basically there
to just be sexy for men.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
It's only fair, you know, they're gonna do it to us.
It's only fair. That's right.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JOHN: Unlike '94,
there were so many naked women walking in the fields,
that you couldn't count it.
MAN: I think we've pretty much taken over Woodstock '99, so.
It was the most promiscuous
of my lifetime, you know.
I don't see shows with naked women running around,
you know, anymore.
-Woodstock '99! -Woodstock '99!
(SCREAMS)
JOHN: And, you know, you gotta think
you probably got an audience
of an average age in their early 20s.
Guys in their early 20s tend to be horny 24 hours a day.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Because of this MTV spring break feeling in the air,
you know, there was some people who were disrespectful.
Five-year plan! Oh, I will be back again.
JONATHAN DAVIS: There was a definite hyper sexuality to that time.
Girls Gone Wild, porn was in the mainstream,
but that isn't an excuse for some dipshit
to grab a girl's titty when she's coming up over the pit.
No artist wants that,
no one sits there and goes, "Oh, look at that."
It's disgusting. It's not cool.
And then that's when you get pissed
that you'll call out a fan, that can beat that guy's ass.
I'll get in trouble and sued for it,
beat that motherfucker's ass right there.
-"You. You just did that." -(CROWD CHEERING)
All right, thanks a lot!
Hey, are you guys having a good time?
-(CROWD CHEERING) -DEXTER HOLLAND: All right!
Goddamn it, I'm having a good time.
But you know what, I was noticing something
I gotta call your guys attention to here for just a second.
I've been noticing that there's a lot of girls
coming over to the top here, crowd surfing,
and they're getting really groped,
you know what I mean?
Now I think just 'cause a girl
wants to go crowd surfing or whatever,
that doesn't give a guy the right to molest them,
-you know what I'm saying? -(CROWD CHEERING)
So if you're a guy and you see a girl passing overhead,
give her a break, all right, you know what I'm saying?
And if you're a girl and you see a guy passing overhead,
I want you to grab his fucking balls!
(CROWD CHEERING)
♪ ("SELF ESTEEM" BY THE OFFSPRING PLAYING) ♪
♪ La, la, la, la, la ♪
NARRATOR: "Friday, July 23rd.
Caught the tail end of Offspring.
More naked boobs.
It's kind of getting old.
Outlook for a shower, not good.
Tomorrow's goal get on the Woodstock video
by being in the Metallica pit."
DEXTER: All right, now do me a favor
and sing along to this one, all right?
NARRATOR: "Rock on!"
♪ I wrote her off For the tenth time today ♪
DEXTER: We are on the first day
and it wasn't even quite nighttime yet.
And, I mean, I like rowdy shows like that's a lot of the fun
is the energy of the crowd and stuff,
and you could feel something bubbling
I can't quite put my finger on it, but--
NOODLES: It was all the shit being thrown up on stage. (CHUCKLES)
-DEXTER: Oh, yeah, that kinda-- -And I don't think we even asked
-for it, I mean-- -That's a tip-off.
♪ That's okay, man, 'Cause I like the abuse ♪
♪ I know she's playing with me ♪
♪ That's okay 'cause I got No self-esteem ♪
It really seemed like in pop culture,
there's this dark energy coming from young white males
that entertainment is both catering to and perpetuating.
TYLER DURDEN: We've all been raised on television
to believe that one day we'd be all millionaires,
and movie gods, and rock stars but we won't.
We're slowly learning that fact.
And we're very, very pissed off.
DAVE HOLMES: At the end of the millennium,
a lot of movies marketed toward young people with anger
and with what is sexual assault.
And we thought nothing of it at the time.
It was boys and girls alike
clapped at the end of the movie, and that was that.
MAUREEN: You know, you've got this festival
that's supposed to be espousing countercultural,
loftier ideals when the '90s were anything but that.
So why attempt to manufacture nostalgia for Woodstock '69,
an event that none of these kids were alive for?
(CROWD CHEERING)
WYCLEF JEAN: Hold on.
-♪ (GUITAR PLAYING) ♪ -(CROWD CHEERING)
ROB SHEFIELD: A theme through the festival
was that artists kept making echoes
about the original festival that were completely lost
on those that were there.
Pat, who played the "Star Spangled Banner"
at the original Woodstock?
-I can't remember. -Come on, man,
you gotta work with me here. Try.
Shit, is the name Jerry?
ROB: Woodstock was something that was talked about
but not really like a part of '90s rock culture.
And '90s rock culture was booming in a way that made
'60s rock culture seemed trivial and outdated in a lot of ways.
-BUSH: Give me an F. -CROWD: F!
-BUSH: Give me a U. Give me a... -CROWD: U!
ROB: And then when Bush led the crowd
in a F-U-C-K cheer, you know,
that had gotten Country Joe and the Fish
in so much trouble back 30 years earlier,
absolutely nobody in the crowd got that joke
or understood why it was supposed to be amusing.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ROB: So, you know, it's interesting,
going back to the way Nirvana on Nevermind
with their little parody of, you know,
"Everybody get together, try to love one another right now."
♪ Everybody get together ♪
♪ Try to love One another right now ♪
ROB: For the crowd that was at Woodstock '99,
the idea of Nirvana and Pearl Jam was as outdated
as seeing Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Grateful Dead.
You know, it was not something that was really in sync
with the kids who were there to see Korn and Limp Bizkit.
(CROW CHEERING)
♪ ("BLIND" BY KORN PLAYING) ♪
♪ Are you ready? ♪
♪ This place inside my mind A place I like to hide ♪
♪ You don't know the chances ♪
-♪ What if I should die? ♪ -♪ A place inside my... ♪
JONATHAN: I can't even put it into words what I was feeling.
I'm feeling numb. I don't feel anything.
I'm just like in the zone, like, "Oh my God,
okay, I gotta go out there and kill this."
And I know for a fact they're not all Korn fans,
so I gotta win these fuckers over.
(VOCALIZING)
JONATHAN: The crowd was so big that they had
three sets of PAs set up and they were time aligned,
but you could see how sound travels
'cause they would jump in time so that the crowd
would do this wave effect.
After that, I was like, "Fuck, I don't have-- I left my body."
I can't tell you what the fuck happened after that.
-Come on, Woodstock! -(CROWD CHEERING)
♪ (ROCK MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JONATHAN: I just went as hard and as intense as I could go
and still sing, but it was so fucking hot,
I literally collapsed after the last song.
I walked backstage, and I fell on the ground.
They put bags of ice all over me
and ran IVs and put me on oxygen.
I was that-- I was gone.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BEN: My only goal is to be front row for Korn,
so I fought my way through and I remember
thinking to myself, "Wow there's probably
50,000 people behind me."
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BEN: And then during the concert,
I started feeling a little funny.
I was cold and I thought to myself,
"It's gotta be 110 degrees out here.
Why am I cold?"
And it dawned on me like, "Wow, I think have hypothermia."
My body's never felt this way before
and I said, "I think I'm in trouble." (CHUCKLES)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVE HOLMES: I was very near the stage
and like person after person was like pulled out of the pit.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVE KONIG: I worked Hurricane Katrina
and Hurricane Rita
and Hurricane Sandy but whenever people ask me
about Woodstock '99, I always say
that it was the greatest disaster I ever went to.
For any event like this, environmental concerns
are gonna definitely be at the forefront,
and the heat was absolutely atrocious.
So you had to worry about heat stroke,
heat exhaustion, hyperthermia.
We need to make sure that people are staying hydrated.
Everybody that was there was like packed together.
And bodies generate heat
then other bodies right next to it
are absorbing that heat.
And then they have these huge runways made of asphalt.
It definitely added to increased ground temperatures.
Every single night,
we were doing like a thousand transports
and a lot of them were just dehydrations
because people didn't have enough water that day.
I would say 90 percent of the cases that we saw
were caused by the environment and the lack of access to water.
REPORTER: The one thing I would say is,
if you don't like heat, don't come to Woodstock '99.
It is hot.
Please don't come unless you are prepared to be baked.
-WOMAN: Anything else? -MAN: Okay. Another refreshment coming.
NICK: Everything was pretty highly regulated
with the vendors all the water had to be sold
for four dollars a bottle,
which, you know, even now 20 years later
-is a ridiculous cost. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BEN: I couldn't believe that bottles of water
were four dollars. I wasn't prepared
to pay four dollars for water.
DAVE: When the beer is the same price of water,
as a kid if, if I had a choice, I would choose the beer, too.
And then on top of that, the alcohol is actually
dehydrating you further.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -MAUREEN: There were accounts
that security guards in searching kids
before they came in were told, "Under no means
let them come in with their own food,
their own water."
But when it came to drugs, the guards were happy
to take a 20 or a 50 to look the other way.
JAKE HAFNER: In 1999, I was 23 years old,
and a good friend of mine called me up one day
and asked me if I wanted to work security
at Woodstock '99.
JOHN: The security was hard to hire. They're a lot of them.
And we had to get licensed ones,
which, you know, was not that easy.
JAKE: They had a three-hour class I had to take
and the instructor basically spent
the last two hours of the class
going through the test question by question,
giving the answer and then at the end of that,
then he handed out the test and we took it.
It was kind of anyone that, you know, was semi-lucid
and could write their name was eligible
to be a security guard at Woodstock '99.
JOHN: At the gates, we had our most trusted security guys.
So if somebody was trying to take money,
it would have got caught.
And with drinking water,
it was unquestionably lots of free water.
MICHAEL: You know, I mean, we worked
with the health department to create a water system
that would accommodate everybody who was there.
You didn't have to buy water if you didn't want to.
JOHN: Yes, bottles of water were four dollars.
It was somewhat on the high side,
but it wasn't as ridiculous as it got made out to be
and if you're gonna go to a festival,
you bring money with you.
This was not a poor man's festival.
INTERVIEWER: What's this line for?
-The ATM machine. -CROWD: Yeah.
-INTERVIEWER: The ATM? -ATM.
-INTERVIEWER: Oh! -We've been waiting here a long time.
JESSICA: We're 18. I'm working at a pizzeria for minimum wage.
We're hot, we're sweaty, we're tired.
We didn't sleep well. We're not starting
on the best footing to start our, you know,
three day of adventure, you know.
MAN: Turn on the water!
CAMERA MAN: Dude, what do you think about the water shortage, man?
-It is fucked up. -CAMERA MAN: Shit is fucked up, man.
-No more water. -CAMERA MAN: Let's start a riot.
Woodstock '99, the riots.
MIKE: I'm a college kid. I'm 20 years old.
There's a lot of people that were younger than me.
There's a lot of people that just like
paid a lot of money to go to this festival.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MIKE: You would go to these little troughs
where you're supposed to be able to have a drink
and there was people showering in them.
So, while you just wanted
to like douse your face with water
or brush your teeth or do something with water,
there was just people like full-on showering,
you know, shampoo, soap.
And then at some point, I think somebody busted a pipe
because they were so tired of waiting for the water.
So, then there was just like,
all this water just going all over the place
near the campgrounds and even flowing
into the camp area, which led to the mud.
MAUREEN: The porta potties,
it didn't take long for them to become pretty much unusable.
They were backing up pretty quickly
and then the sewage was seeping out,
to the point where you had kids
within the first 24 hours
rolling around in what they thought was mud
but was really human waste.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -(SCREAMS)
KEN: That mud that these people were in,
as far as I was concerned,
based on what I saw, it was mud and shit.
So I did see people covered in that,
thought that was pretty strange,
not a thing I would normally see where I come from.
CAMERAMAN: We are going on a mission
that nobody has ever gone on.
Oh, you see. You can smell.
-The place is gruesome... Oh! -CAMERAMAN: Holy shit.
ROB: Plumbing, always a challenge
at rock festivals. Again,
this was something that in the '90s,
people did not think there was a better way
to do stuff like this.
People, in the future,
worth their weight in gold.
-I'm telling you. -(MAN LAUGHING)
ROB: So the place smelled pretty gross
by even Friday afternoon.
NOODLES: You know, there's a festival grounds in Germany.
It was literally built by Hitler.
And we've played there a bunch of times,
it's a great venue, lot of fun. The airbase was less hospitable
than the venue built by Nazis.
(BOTH LAUGH)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
PAX VOLUNTEER: Hi, we're with an organization called PAX,
what we're doing is we're getting people
to sign these petitions against gun violence.
It's a good thing. It's basically trying
to get people to stop getting guns
in the hands of kids, you know.
We're giving away candles for the...
the light ceremony tomorrow night at eight o'clock.
So here, why don't you just take one as a souvenir
for coming by and seeing us.
And stop by the candle ceremony at eight o'clock tomorrow night
and I'm sure you'll see all the candles
that we've given out. Thanks.
♪ ("BAWITDABA" BY KID ROCK PLAYING) ♪
♪ Bawitdaba, da bang, Da dang diggy diggy, diggy ♪
♪ Said the boogie Said up jump the boogie ♪
♪ Bawitdaba, da bang Da dang diggy diggy, diggy ♪
♪ Said the boogie Said up jump the boogie ♪
STEVEN: I think about Kid Rock coming out
in this luxurious, white fur coat.
If you were looking for an easy metaphor
to explain the haves and the have-nots
at Woodstock '99 and in fact, I think in 1999 in general
to me, like that sums it up perfectly.
-(CROW CHEERING) -DAVE HOLMES: It's a very weird thing
that you see at the end of the '90s.
There's just this simmering anger.
And it manifested itself through sludge and angst.
♪ My name is Kid ♪
♪ Is Kid Rock ♪
♪ Bawitdaba, da bang Da dang diggy diggy, diggy ♪
DAVE HOLMES: The DJ on stage became a weird trope
and you never really knew why they were there,
just you would hear a faint
sort of wicky-wicky noise in the background,
and that was enough to sustain a whole band member.
It seemed like the kind of thing that would break down barriers,
you know, hip-hop and rock would be one thing.
But it really didn't.
WESLEY: If you look at the history
of American music, nu metal was just bound to happen.
This is a country whose music was basically forged
in white people impersonating Black people.
It makes all the sense in the world
that that would wind up in this sort of swamp
that nu metal basically becomes.
MOBY: You know, a lot of times when white people
have embraced hip-hop, they've ignored the funk,
they've ignored the R&B.
You know, they've ignored the subtlety
and they've embraced homophobia and misogyny.
♪ If you don't like Kid Rock You can suck my dick ♪
MOBY: The same thing with metal.
There's a lot of wonderful, celebratory, joyful, fun metal,
but somehow nu metal embraced the troglodyte elements.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -KID ROCK: Now listen close.
You want me to get political?
Well, this is about as deep as Kid Rock thinks.
Monica Lewinsky is a fucking hoe
and Bill Clinton is a goddamn pimp.
(CROWD CHEERING)
MOBY: And granted this is over 20 years ago
and I'm still so baffled, like, how it went from
the sort of progressive enlightened values
of Kurt Cobain and Michael Stipe
to misogyny and homophobia.
And the rape, frat boy culture that was at Woodstock '99.
MAUREEN: What happened in the early '90s with Nirvana
was nothing short of a generational overtaking.
The acts and the artists
that had been dominating the culture
were wiped off the face of the planet by Nevermind.
Boy bands, pop music, hair metal, it was all done.
Nirvana actually gave a voice
to the unrest that was happening,
that the gatekeepers of pop culture were not aware of.
And so, Nirvana just cracked that door open,
and it gave an entire generation this purpose and connection.
STEVEN: You had bands that were talking about
feminism and LGBTQ rights and anti-racism.
And I think a lot of people looked at rock music and hip-hop
as these things that could actually
make a difference in the world.
MAUREEN: It was a sudden earthquake
in rock and roll and pop culture
in which the boys and the girls want to level the playing field,
So you have Kurt in a dress, gender bending.
You have Riot grrrl,
you have the second most relevant band
of that decade, The Beastie Boys,
maturing and apologizing for their sexism and misogyny.
Especially in terms of like girls becoming empowered
and becoming sure of themselves, you know.
If we could help with that, that was kind of cool.
MAUREEN: And on top of that, you have this generation
of young men who really,
for the first time, had been raised by moms
who came of age during the real first wave of feminism,
or had been raised by single moms,
and so you sort of felt
that there was this unprecedented parity
in this generation between the boys and the girls.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
But that said, grunge was very short lived.
It became commodified and commercialized so quickly.
This negative energy just makes me stronger.
We will not retreat. This band is unstoppable.
And then in April of 1994,
you have the death of Kurt Cobain.
The hope that people had in the early '90s was gone.
MOBY: Then like culture went from progressive to aggressive.
It went from inclusive to violent and misogynistic.
Honestly, and this might sound overly simplistic and glib,
but it was money. You know, the major labels
the alternative rocks stations, MTV, Spin, Rolling Stone
all of a sudden, they realized they made more money
because their demographic was expanded.
SCOTT STAPP: Our peak started around '99.
That's when nu metal came in, too.
So we were all kinda blowing up at the same exact time.
But post grunge, you know where Creed was born,
we really had something to say and we were looking inward,
really expressing these feelings of frustration,
that time in our life where the idealistic view
that we had of the world was crushed and crumbled.
And then, the nu metal, took it a step further
with its angst, this aggression.
It became the mouthpiece of the generation
along with naivety, bravado,
talking trash, being rebellious
and I think that's why it connected.
TARIQ: There was also that underlying fear
of the unknown. The angst, and anxiety associated
with just not knowing
what was gonna happen at the time
of the new millennia.
And people needed some way to sort of exhaust that energy
and I think that genre of music provided the perfect vehicle
for people to just say, you know, "Fuck it."
MAUREEN: You know these artists,
they tapped into something very real
and something that had been sort of pushed down
in the earlier part of the decade.
And so I don't necessarily think
that acts like Korn or Limp Bizkit
were fomenting something in the culture
that wasn't already there.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
REPORTER: They hated jocks, loved the internet.
They were known as the Trench Coat Mafia,
question is why didn't anyone know
they turned so violent.
And they, like, started blowing up
and shooting everyone in the cafeteria.
REPORTER: They are a group of disenfranchised kids
that have threatened revenge
in the past for kids making fun of them.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STEVEN: Just three months, before Woodstock '99
the school shooting at Columbine took place.
And it's such an extreme act of violence,
but I think it's an example of people
who are really struggling to be seen.
BILL: And we continue our reporting on the corrosive effects
of the popular music world on some American children.
NEWS REPORTER: We now know that one of them also posted
violent lyrics on the internet.
MAUREEN: I think the blaming of artists, musicians,
filmmakers. It's all just political maneuvering
and an easy way to misdirect your eye over here
when the real problems
are so much more difficult and really require digging in.
I think if anyone like Hitler or Mussolini were alive now,
they'd have to be rock stars.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -♪ (HEAVY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Hey, what's up?
-Are we doing all right? -MAN: Yeah.
-Everything going good still? -Everything's going great man.
We were just hanging out with Puff up there, man.
-He's a cool guy. -MAN 2: Yo, D!
-What's up, how you doing? -MAN 2: What's up, man?
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
NARRATOR: "Saturday, July 24th, 1999.
Busy day.
Just made it back to the tent for some R&R.
We saw in this order Tragically Hip,
I know why they do so well,
they bring Canada to all their shows.
Kid Rock, I'm getting that album.
He played every instrument during each song.
That rocks.
Wyclef Jean and the Refugee All-Stars.
I remember saying of someone's mother once,
something about nothing nice to say?
Counting Crows, not the same live, but not bad.
Dave Matthews, nothing needs to be said.
My shoes got soaked twice. Oh, well.
Now to build up strength, because I'm going to the pit.
(SIGHING) Hippies beating on drums down the road.
Fucking hippies."
(METAL CLANGING)
MIKE: So there were these trash can drum circles.
I had never seen anything like that in my life.
(CLANGS)
MIKE: You would find the most insane looking characters
just banging on anything they could find.
BEN: All day long for that whole weekend,
a bunch of people had taken trash cans
and tipped them over and were banging
on them incessantly.
Not really in rhythm just banging, banging, banging.
And we thought it was kind of funny
but we also thought like,
"Well, I wonder who is going to put these trash cans
back over and put them back where they were."
MAN: (ON MICROPHONE) Sixty-nine, '94, a poster for '99.
Anybody else?
-...up here and you can do this. -(PEOPLE CHEERING)
(PEOPLE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
On Saturday, you could see that we, as a group
kind of abused the place.
You have so many people, not enough receptacles.
So, like you would expect, a camping trip, a lot of BO,
sweat, mud and garbage everywhere.
Excrement, you know it was not good.
It was not good. A lot of it, you know.
ROB: Every night I slept on a pile of pizza boxes.
Pizza boxes were very good surface
to sleep on cause pizza boxes are white and it's important, because they're white
you can tell if they've been urinated on or not
because every flat surface there had been
so thoroughly urinated on by Friday evening.
KEN: The showers, I wanted no part
of those things really from day one.
They basically had just one big communal shower,
like one for the women, one for the men.
When we went in there, the water was like shin to knee deep,
so you're basically just showering in filth.
Then, the women shower was next to ours,
also separated by a tarp.
So, there were like dudes like,
pulling the tarp back to, like, look at the women
who were showering next door.
WOMAN: I did not take a shower there.
I definitely saw that there were showers
and was not comfortable with that.
That did not seem like safe space.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVE: The site, it reminded you of like a refugee camp
from the movies.
That there had been some sort of big battle
and there was just trash all over,
so you just saw that break down
of both the structure and civility.
(ALL CHEER)
DAVE: Also, it was just interesting
because the security at Woodstock '99
was a little bit of a different beast.
You could just tell,
just from the interactions with them
that they just didn't act like usual security guards.
CAMERA MAN: How was your fucking job?
-Awesome time, man. -Was it nice? Did you get pussy?
Did you use that pass right there to get some pussy?
-Yes, I did. -Did you?
-Yes I did. -I hate you. I'm jealous.
The vast majority of them were just doing whatever it was
that they wanted.
Security didn't really work with anyone else.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
♪ ("IRONIC" BY ALANIS MORRISSETTE PLAYING) ♪
♪ An old man turned 98 ♪
CROWD: ♪ He won the lottery And died the next day ♪
-♪ It's a ♪ -CROWD: ♪ Black fly ♪
-♪ In your ♪ -CROWD: ♪ Chardonnay ♪
♪ It's a death row pardon ♪
♪ Two minutes too late ♪
♪ And isn't it ironic Don't you think? ♪
♪ It's like rain On your wedding day ♪
♪ It's a free ride ♪
♪ When you've already paid ♪
JEWEL: Woodstock '99 definitely felt like
it lacked a cohesive feeling.
Was it because, in all honesty, the Gen Xers and next generation
really weren't fighting anything.
But we wanted to be angsty and we wanted to be deep.
I think the only thing we were really fighting
is we didn't feel like we had a purpose.
You know, difficult times galvanize you.
It galvanizes you around a cause.
But the '99 Woodstock just seemed like
it was trying to relive a nostalgic moment
along with commercialism and kind of capitalizing
and trying to maximize profits, but not having
a real soulful purpose for the show.
♪ It's like rain On your wedding day ♪
BEN: Somebody made a decision about this lineup,
like, we're gonna have a bunch of metal bands here,
and we're also gonna have, you know, Jewel and Cheryl Crow.
♪ Advice That you just didn't take ♪
MAUREEN: I have no idea what went
into the thought processes of the promoters
in booking only three female acts.
JOHN: I didn't think in any way in terms of male-female.
You either had to be a rock band or you had to have the charisma
to be able to pull it off.
We didn't say there has to be X number of female acts.
We booked who we thought belonged on it.
STEVEN: It seems like it was a deliberate choice
because each woman is on a different day of the festival.
It was like there was a quota for estrogen at Woodstock '99.
DAVE HOLMES: Saturday, I remember watching Alanis Morissette
and feeling aggravation from the audience,
literal angst bubbling up in the crowd.
And then I saw what was on the bill
for the rest of the night, which was in a row,
Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine,
Metallica. That is a lot of aggression.
♪ And isn't it ironic Don't you think? ♪
♪ A little too ironic And, yeah, I really do think ♪
(CROWD CHEERING)
ALANIS MORISETTE: Thank you very much everyone. I love you.
(CHUCKLING) So much. Have a great night.
-Bless you each. -(CROWD CHEERING)
CAMERA MAN: How you doing?
-WOMAN: Good. How's it going? -Woodstock, baby.
-We're here. -CAMERA MAN: You see Limp Bizkit?
I'm gonna go see him later today?
There was a lot of buzz around Limp Bizkit.
It was probably the apex of their career and I loved it.
I kinda looked like Fred Durst,
and I was just ready to be a part of it
and I couldn't wait for their show.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -We're here on MTV.
And we're ready for you, Woodstock.
I'm here to see Limp Bizkit.
MIKE: The morning before their show, I was on MTV
rapping Limp Bizkit lyrics with a crowd behind me.
And I just started saying, "I did it all for the 'Nookie.'"
"Come on. The nookie.
Come on, so you can take the cookie and stick it up your..."
-ALL: Ass! -Stick it up your
-Your Ass. -Stick it up your...
MIKE: People are screaming, "Stick it up your ass,"
"Stick it up your ass, Stick it up your ass."
This is Fred from Limp Bizkit.
Let's find out who we are
on Ultra Sound this Sunday at 10:00. Punk.
Limp Bizkit, huge MTV artist at the time.
"Nookie." A smash.
You know any time we would put them on
or have them as guests or whatever it would rate really well.
Right now, we've got another performance
from Limp Bizkit who has an amazing album coming out on...
CARSON: It was a mutually beneficial relationship between the two.
Yeah, like MTV and Limp Bizkit were just, like, synonymous
it seemed in 1999.
And that's one of the greatest ascensions
of a band of that caliber that I've seen in a long time.
-You want the worst? -(CROWD CHEERING)
Well, you got the worst.
The one, the only...
-Limp Bizkit. -(CROWD CHEERING)
MIKE: Before they took the stage I looked around,
and I had never seen that many people before.
(CROWD CHEERING)
KEN: In the moment, it felt like, "Man,
we're seeing something special here."
And the crowds were fucking bananas for them.
MIKE: By day two, people were like a little bit drunker,
a little bit hotter, a little bit angrier.
And then Limp Bizkit's bass player came out
and he was just giving everybody the double middle finger.
Now, that was kind of the vibe that Limp Bizkit started with,
and then Fred Durst stepped in.
This is 1999, motherfucker.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -♪ (HEAVY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Take your Birkenstocks
and stick 'em up your fucking ass.
MIKE: People were just pumped up.
They had a lot of energy, lot of like college dudes.
College white dudes,
it looked like that was the crowd,
just like angry white, fraternity college dudes.
And that was when I realized I was the kind
of the perfect demographic for Woodstock to market to.
I was like the exact person that they wanted to go.
(CROWD CHEERING)
DAVE HOLMES: The typical festival
has many different cliques. They tend to go
for different genres and different fan bases
and whatever. This seemed to aim directly
at the most furious 24-year-olds in your life.
-Kid Rock, you going to see Kid rock? -MAN: Nah, bro.
I'm going to check out fucking Limp Bizkit,
Rage, Metallica, bro.
BEN: When you have a crowd who are excited, inebriated,
hot, and now you give 'em a band
that helped them release that energy,
what do you think is gonna happen?
(CROWD CHEERING)
FRED DURST: Hey, let me ask you a personal question.
How many people here ever woke up one morning
and just decided, it wasn't one of those days
and you're gonna break some shit?
-(CROWD CHEERING) -(DRUM BEATING)
Well, this is one of them days y'all...
where everything's fucked up,
and you just wanna break some shit.
You feel me?
-(CROWD CHEERING) -Let's feel it.
♪ ("BREAK STUFF" BY LIMP BIZKIT PLAYING) ♪
♪ Its just one of those days ♪
♪ Where you don't want To wake up ♪
♪ Everything is fucked Everybody sucks ♪
♪ You don't really know why But you want to justify ♪
♪ Rippin' someone's head off ♪
♪ No human contact And if you interact ♪
♪ Your life is on contract ♪
♪ Your best bet Is to stay away motherfucker ♪
♪ It's just one of those days ♪
♪ It's all about the he-says, She-says... ♪
JONATHAN: They had the crowd going insane, but by that time
people were walking around in shit and piss
because all of the fucking porta potties overflowed.
They were dehydrated, passing out.
It was too many people for what the facilities
they had, and then, it just went from there.
♪ It's all about the he-says, She-says bullshit ♪
♪ I think you better quit... ♪
DAVE HOLMES: And I know that he had an image to maintain
and they wanna do, like, put on a proper Limp Bizkit show.
But, you know, like even a liquor commercial says,
-"Please Drink Responsibly." -♪ (MUSIC PLAYING CONTINUES) ♪
Time to reach deep down inside...
and take all that negative energy...
all that negative energy.
And let that shit out of your fucking system.
You got girl problems, you got boy problems,
you got parent problems, you got boss problems,
you got job problems, you got a problem with me,
you got a problem with yourself,
it's time to take all that negative energy
and put it the fuck out.
-You feel me, Woodstock? -(CROWD CHEERING)
All right, let's bring it out.
When this song kicks in,
I want you to fucking kick in.
You got it?
♪ I feel like shit ♪
♪ My suggestion Is to keep your distance ♪
♪ Cause right now I'm dangerous ♪
♪ We've all felt like shit And been treated like shit ♪
♪ All of those motherfuckers Who want to step up ♪
♪ I hope you know I pack a chainsaw ♪
♪ I'll skin your ass raw ♪
♪ And if my day keeps going This way ♪
♪ I just might break Something tonight ♪
♪ I pack a chainsaw I'll skin your ass raw ♪
♪ And if my day keeps going This way ♪
♪ I just might break Your fuckin' face tonight ♪
♪ Give me something ♪
♪ Give me something to break ♪
♪ How bout yer fucking face ♪
♪ I hope you know I pack a chainsaw ♪
-♪ What! ♪ -♪ A chainsaw ♪
-♪ What! ♪ -♪ A motherfucking chainsaw ♪
♪ What! ♪
♪ So come and get it ♪
(CROWD CHEERING)
That's some tight shit right there,
the crowd surfing on the plywood.
JOHN: Fred Durst was a moron.
He was completely defiant in between songs.
We went up to him,
you know, and said, "Hey, calm things down" you know.
He was out of his mind.
He was completely out of his mind.
Fuck, we're Limp Bizkit.
That's right. Fuck you, too.
MIKE: People tried to blame Fred Durst.
I don't think you can blame Fred Durst.
Fred Durst was being Fred Durst.
He was doing what people wanted him to do.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: A normal Limp Bizkit show, he doesn't jump
into the audience on a piece of plywood, get passed around
and keep screaming "Break things, break things,
break things."
He caused a lot of trouble. It's a miracle nobody got hurt
because we still had another day.
CHRIS CONNELLY: How scary was it for you up there
when they started ripping that place apart,
when they started taking the plywood off the towers
-and stuff? -Oh, my God.
Dude, it's not our fault.
JONATHAN: It gets me pissed off, you see I'm swelling up
right now. It makes me mad because they blame us.
Rock music has always been the escape,
I mean, "Hey, I feel a connection with this person
'cause he's going through what I went through,
and if he got through it, I can get through it."
MAUREEN: To blame the artists, I think it's too easy.
We never ask the deeper, existential question,
"Why are so many young men in America,
why are they so angry?"
STEVEN: It's very convenient to say that,
"This aggressive rock band. It's their fault."
But I think that if you look at what was going on in the culture
and the rot that was setting in, in a lot of places,
it's bigger than nu metal.
And it's certainly bigger than Limp Bizkit.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -♪ (METAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STEVEN: I think when we look back on 1999,
it was a very top-down world and I think in general,
the 20th century was a very top-down era.
♪ ("KILLING IN THE NAME" BY RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE PLAYING) ♪
♪ Killing in the name of ♪
STEVEN: It was very easy for the government
or corporations or whoever was in power
to dictate the way that the world was going to be.
And there really was nothing
that the average person could do to stop it.
♪ Some of those That work forces ♪
♪ Are the same That burn crosses ♪
MAUREEN: One of the most offensive things
about Woodstock '99 was that these guys
who were relics of the '60s felt that this was something
that Gen X needed, that we somehow needed
our own experience of what they had.
♪ Burn crosses ♪
♪ Killing in the name of ♪
WESLEY: The idea of older generations
subjecting younger generations to the way they wish things
would be, is such an American thing.
And accepting that your moment
has passed is really hard for people to fathom.
And you know a lot of what doesn't get done in this country
doesn't get done because older people
are scared of younger people.
♪ Now you do What they told you ♪
MAUREEN: No one was asking for another Woodstock.
There was no desire for it.
To me it's the narcissism and the self-regard
of the baby boomer generation which continues to hang on
to power in every way in America.
It's political, it's economic, it's cultural.
Like the reins have not been turned over.
They will not be turned over until they're all probably gone.
♪ Fuck you, I won't do What you tell me ♪
ALL: ♪ Fuck you, I won't do What you tell me ♪
STEVEN: In 1999, you're starting to see instances
where power dynamics were changing in the country.
And technology was gonna make it impossible
for the world to continue to be that way in the new century.
-♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪ -(CROWD CHEERING)
-♪ (MILD MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -Welcome to Hastings.
NEWS REPORTER: Most of us head out to a music store
to buy CDs, but not Mike Chestworth.
He goes to napster.com to get all the music he wants
and he doesn't pay for it.
STEVEN: For years you had people who were being forced to spend
18 dollars on a CD when they only wanted one song.
And there was really no recourse for those people.
So, when there was finally a means to circumvent
the record companies in the form of Napster.
I think people knew that they were stealing music
but they didn't care.
Part of what we're trying to do here is make
people understand that what they're doing is illegal.
I'm not even gonna get into the moral issue.
MAUREEN: When Napster came along in '99
and it looked like it was gonna profoundly shift the way
that music was produced and sold and consumed,
and what it meant for artists and their revenue streams,
Lars Ulrich had the very unpopular opinion
that this was not good.
It sort of seemed like a cranky old man voice,
like you can't get in the way of technology.
In all due respect to Lars and Metallica,
I look at Napster as power going back to the people.
DAVE MUSTAINE: For me I-- see I remember back
when I was in Metallica that we used to trade tapes.
That's how we even discovered bands.
I don't know, I can't blame Lars for doing the things
that he does.
He-- who knows why a guy does that?
I mean does he have enough money?
Probably, right?
I mean I can't-- my brain's going
"Don't say it, Dave, don't say it, Dave,
don't say it, Dave." (CHUCKLES)
And you're going, "Say it, Dave, say it, Dave, say it, Dave."
(CHUCKLES)
(CROWD CHEERING)
We are Metallica.
And this is what we do best, motherfucker!
♪ ("FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS" BY METALLICA PLAYING) ♪
(CHEERS)
(ALL CHEERING)
DAVID: That second night when Dave and I went
to see Metallica. He was so excited,
and there was just that very much, like...
(INHALES SHARPLY) "This is it, this is the goal,
this is why I'm here. I'm gonna get in the mosh pit.
This is my Everest."
I had never been in a mosh pit before.
I was a little uncomfortable. And people are crowd surfing,
and you're kinda like getting kicked in the head
and whatever, but it's cool.
MIKE: It was so intense and people just doing
their thing in the mosh pit like throwing people around.
And you'd feel like you could just get trampled
and nobody would care about you.
♪ (TRIPPY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
It was a weird mass of humanity where it was just a sea
and you just kind of undulated in all four directions.
MIKE: It's so tightly packed together
and it's so claustrophobic.
You literally cannot control your own body.
You'd feel your feet getting lifted up off the ground
and you move with the crowd because the organism
becomes stronger than any individual person.
DAVID: I just get to a point where I'm like,
"This isn't for me," and I feel bad
because Dave's been cool, you know,
but he recognizes even, like, this isn't my scene,
you know, so, he's like, "You can go if you want."
I'm like, "Well, I'm gonna try to go that way,
I'm gonna try to go back."
I don't know how many people I walked through,
I don't know how many football fields
I walked through, but I got out of there.
I'm usually the last person at things that I go to.
But by Saturday night I couldn't take it.
And I knew that Sunday
was going to be even more brutal.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BEN: After Metallica, they had DJs every night
and I've never really been to a rave
or I wasn't really into DJs,
but I thought, "Hey, we're here. Like, let's check it out."
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MAUREEN: I felt the rave hangar was very cynical, very soulless.
"Let's shove in some DJs, and some drugs, and some kids,
and we'll just keep this going all night."
MOBY: We were excited, this is one of the biggest show
I'd ever played, you know, it was Woodstock.
And the rave tent was supposed
to be sort of like an idyllic separate area
from Woodstock, but it still had been infected
by that like, broken, dusty, sad, angry vibe.
♪ (UPBEAT SONG PLAYING) ♪
MAUREEN: It made no sense to me, whatsoever.
There's no crossover, there's no world in which a kid
who is there for Limp Bizkit
is also, like, looking to go do ecstasy in the rave tent
and like bliss out to Moby, it's just not happening.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MOBY: We walked offstage and we were like,
"Get out of here, like, we need to leave right now."
Our plan had been to park up and stay for the whole weekend,
but that, like, atavistic part of our brains
-collectively said, "Leave now." -♪ (HEAVY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
It's bad and it's not getting better.
MAUREEN: To have music going, acts going,
like churning through the day
into night 'til 5:00 a.m. and there's no rest,
there's no breaks, there's no rhythm,
there's no come down,
what are you expecting to happen?
Everybody's going like this, and they can't sustain it.
It's gonna crash. It's gonna crash in a very big,
cinematic, cataclysmic way.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JESSICA: The last morning, I remember
for a sleeping arrangement it was--
I fell asleep on the wood chips.
What woke me up basically was someone yelling out,
"Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall!"
And I was like, "Holy shit, Pink Floyd is here?"
And I was like, "This is what I'm talking about, man!"
I was like, "This is what the Woodstock
I wanted it to be." Like, they're gonna
have someone unexpected like that to pop out.
And I ran and it was just people basically pushing the wall down.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JAKE: By Sunday, a lot of people
that were security, that were peace patrol quit.
And essentially I could have worked 24 hours
a day for all three days if I wanted to.
We found that... (CHUCKLING) ...basically
the very first day, a lot of the peace patrol
got their credential and they got their shirt,
and then they just put their credential
in their pocket, and just waded off into the crowd.
And them attendees were left to their own devices.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(ALL CHEERING)
GIRL: All these crazy people breaking down this wall,
I think it's badass. I know that it took time
to put up, but it's kinda like a trademark of Woodstock '99.
I'm just destroying the wall for fun,
-just 'cause I'm at Woodstock. -MAN: We want Hendrix's face.
"Why not?" That's the real question.
We got bored. There's nothing else to do.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I think it just symbolizes the disrespect that people have.
I mean, people spent a lot of time working on this.
You know it symbolizes peace
and they're just like going crazy.
BOY: It's been a great time, but there are a lot
of really stupid humans around here.
Yeah, all we've been hearing is "Show us your tits,
show us your tits."
MEN: Flash your tits, flash your tits!
Flash your tits, flash your tits!
DAVE: I was taking like a five-minute break
outside of the dispatch office.
And one of the medic units pulls up
and there's someone in the front seat with them
that I didn't recognize.
I was like looked and turned out to be like some little girl.
The medic jumped out, he's not wearing his shirt,
and grabbed his two walkies and yelled over to me,
"Yo, do me a favor. Watch that girl.
Don't let anyone near her."
And about two minutes later, he comes out with a nurse.
So I back up a little bit, he opens the door,
the nurse goes in, she has a blanket.
She unfurls the blanket.
She puts it over the girl, takes her out of the cab,
and you know, basically guides her
into the main medical.
After that, I look at the medic, the medic looks at me.
And I'm like, "Dude, what's up with that?"
And he just looks at me and he's just like,
"Dude, they're just savages.
-Just straight up savages." -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
DAVE: And that's when suddenly the light bulb went off
in my head, and I was like,
"Oh, she's wearing his shirt...
because she had no clothes...
because... she was sexually assaulted."
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVE: This wasn't Woodstock '69. This wasn't Woodstock '94.
This was gonna be Woodstock 1999 where love might be free,
it's not necessarily gonna be given,
but it's also gonna be taken.
MAN: Hey, guys, back. Give her some room.
You're gonna scare her.
JOHN: There's no question that a few incidents took place,
but if you go back in the records
of the police and state police and stuff,
you're not talking about a hundred, or even fifty.
-You're talking about ten. -MAN: Woodstock '99!
JOHN: I am critical
of the hundreds of women that were walking around
with no clothes on. And expecting not to be touched.
They shouldn't have been touched.
And I condemn it. But, you know, I think that women
that were running around naked,
you know, are at least partially to blame for that.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MAUREEN: I mean, seriously, the audacity of these guys.
How dare you say it's our fault
that men can't control themselves,
so what does that say about men?
One girl told me that she found herself
in the crowd surrounded by young men
and that there were three arms on each of her limbs,
and that they were penetrating her digitally.
And that she heard one of them yell, "Rip her apart."
When it was finally over and she was just able
to just run out of there,
she didn't even really think to complain to anyone,
to find anyone to report this to,
and I think there must have been an overwhelming sense
given the sheer anarchy of what was going on
that, you know, "What would be the point?"
Over there, we camp out over there.
If you guys walk over there,
you're gonna hear some noises from me.
Come on, bring everything you got to 'em.
We'll fucking party our asses off.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -Yeah!
LIZ: There was a very masculine centric attitude going on
that "I can do and take what I want here at Woodstock."
BOY: Well, I'm just saying that if you just do whatever you want--
The laws of normal society just don't apply here...
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Show us your tits for the media.
GIRL: No, we're not lifting our shirts up!
I felt unsafe and so I left for my own security.
Based on what I saw, I knew that there was
so many women that didn't tell their stories
or they certainly weren't going to the police.
I wonder where they are and how they're doing.
And so we started this little organization
called Fans Everywhere,
and we put a little thing out on the internet saying,
"Did you have a bad experience at Woodstock?
Do you need somebody to talk to? Do you need some advice?
We promise it's going to be anonymous.
We promise we're not gonna tell anybody,
but we're here to support you."
And I got dozens upon dozens of emails
from women, young women.
Women as young as 14 years old, saying
"I had a bottle shoved up my vagina,"
or, "I had all of my clothes ripped off in a mosh pit,"
or "I was raped in a tent on Saturday night."
"And I was screaming.
And nobody did anything to stop it."
And then to have all these girls say, "But was it my fault?"
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
DAVID: I woke up Sunday morning.
I kinda heard my brothers Rob and Brian talking.
I come out of my tent. And there's no Dave.
Nobody really knows where he is.
But we're thinking, you know,
"Dave was looking for a good time."
So we wouldn't be surprised if he went to the raves
that were out all night or made some friends
'cause he was an easy dude to like.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVID: As the day kinda went along, you know,
it kinda goes from that,
"Okay, he'll turn up," to "Where the hell are you?"
to, you know, "Where are you?"
I don't think any of us were really overly concerned.
It was almost even like there was more anger,
like, "Where the hell is this guy?"
"What the heck, dude?" "Like,
the day's gonna start, and we're leaving today."
"We wanna know what the plan is."
So, we start the search and kinda looking around.
Like, I would head out to the east stage.
We'd take turns going to the hangar,
like that central place
where the board was, and kinda the first aid was.
Well, we just keep walking, keep walking, keep walking.
And we keep going back, and, you know,
I don't think anybody had any real sense
of dread or fear. It was still more of the "He better be hurt
because I'm kinda getting pissed now."
And then Rob was the one who finally found out
what had happened to Dave.
They said it was hyperthermia.
His body temperature rose too high
when he was at Metallica.
But for some reason they administered, you know,
paddles on him, in line with what they were thinking
-that he was OD'ing. -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVID: It was crazy because we didn't do anything.
(CHUCKLES) We didn't do drugs, we didn't bring drugs,
we weren't drinking. And then you would hear
nobody really seemed to take his temperature
'cause they didn't have the core thermometers,
that they weren't treating him properly.
They were not prepared.
Dave was going to a show to go see his favorite band.
I just...
It wasn't really something you ever thought, you know...
I just remember thinking like... (SOBBING)
"This didn't happen...
and somebody's gotta go call his mom."
NEWS REPORTER: I need to talk to you as well
regarding public safety because it was such
a dangerous atmosphere out there.
I was backstage.
The mosh pit medical unit looked like
a Vietnam triage unit, and not only that,
but MTV News was forced to get off of home base.
We felt that it was too dangerous,
there were people throwing glass bottles everywhere.
In all of the concerts I've seen-- come on, there were kids.
I talked to kids later who were petrified out there.
-And I'm sorry I'm not-- -JOHN: Excuse me, do you have a question?
Can I answer your question or you wanna editorialize?
If you'd like to editorialize, come on up
and you can editorialize for everybody.
Can I answer the question if you'll stop talking?
MTV set the tone because they would
only really go on the air with people who were pissed off.
You think that aggro vibe
had anything to do with what happened?
SHERYL CROW: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that
that's what drew the large, young, white, male,
frustrated, upper-middle class,
"I've been given everything and still I'm mad,
but I'm not really sure why I'm mad," kind of attitude.
CARSON: As things started to go down
I remember feeling like things were literally going out
of control and there just became a quintessential moment
where we were told by our bosses
"MTV and, like, Viacom can no longer
guarantee your safety." Like, "Run for it", sort of thing.
And so we packed a van and we drove in this white van.
I remember just, like, speeding through corn fields,
like, to get away from the Woodstock set.
-And it really was terrifying. -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: MTV news made it into as if
it was an animal fest, and it just wasn't.
Bloodthirsty maniacs trying to kill me.
It was disgusting. I was molested.
And I hate all men now.
JOHN: So it terribly got manipulated by MTV,
especially Kurt Loder.
He just wasn't on the team.
There have really been some scary moments here
just with crowd violence.
I'm just laughing. I think Michael, at one point,
called him a war journalist.
That was really what he wanted to be
and this was as close as he was gonna come.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JAKE: A film crew came through
and they had the promoters with them.
And they stopped right in front of us basically
and did a little interview.
And they talked about how great everything was
and what a success it was.
And we're looking at each other, thinking like
"What are these guys talking about?"
Knowing full well that in a few hours
this place was gonna turn into a complete shit show.
INTERVIEWER: We are backstage at Woodstock '99
with the Woodstock organizers, Michael Lang and John Scher.
How's it going? You look all happy, things must be going very well.
JOHN: So far, so good. The music's been amazing.
-Right. -JOHN: Kids are having a good time.
The biggest problem has been a little bit
of too warm temperature,
but other than that we're doing great.
-MC: Woodstock! -(CROWD CHEERING)
MC: Please welcome Atlantic recording artist Jewel!
(CROWD CHEERING)
JEWEL: When I went out, the crowd felt strange.
They felt really tired and very depleted.
Felt like there was a grey, dense fog
hanging over everything,
and for me to try and figure out,
"How do I cut through that?"
"How do I create a tone, or a voice, or a sound
that's gonna cut through this really strange,
heavy energy,"
was definitely at the forefront of my mind while I'm singing.
I didn't know what was going on particularly.
-But you could just feel it. -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MAN: I think we should leave. It's so hot in here.
I'm so weak.
-I can't feel my legs anymore. -BOY: Me neither.
STEVEN: The thing, I think, that amazes me most
is that so many people chose to stay.
It does seem like mass psychosis,
at some point on Sunday.
Because otherwise I have no idea like,
why the hell you're still there.
-It's filthy. -BOY: Piss and shit everywhere.
Piss and shit everywhere.
KEN: And you could just tell, like,
people were not having fun and happy to be there anymore.
And after Jewel, Creed played.
They brought out a guy from The Doors to play with them,
but as a 19-year-old, that meant less than nothing to me.
They're trotting this guy out on stage.
This is Robby Krieger from The Doors, man.
(CROWD CHEERING)
SCOTT: There wasn't this excitement
that I think people would expect or assume,
that we had because it just-- it wasn't Woodstock '69.
But it was our, you know, way of wanting to kind of bring
someone from that era to 1999.
And tie those two festivals together.
DAVE HOLMES: I remember you look at the crowd
and the crowd is all 22 years old,
and Robby Krieger could not mean less to them.
Like, Creed barely means anything to them.
Thirty years ago when this festival
first started...
people came together.
They came together to love.
(CROWD CHEERING)
SCOTT: They came together to show the world
that they could unify for one cause
and that the young people's generation
could make a difference, you know that?
DAVE HOLMES: By Sunday, it's not the market for nostalgia,
specifically nostalgia for 30 full years ago.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BEN: As we were walking from one band to another,
I started seeing people with candles
and I was like, "Why do you have a candle?"
And there were more people with candles
and more people with candles.
ROB: They handed out candles,
specifically trying to get people to set fire to them.
And hold them aloft, you know, in a sort
of Melanie lay down candles in the rain sort of vibe.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MAUREEN: It makes complete sense.
It's a horrible irony that it was a group
of non-profit volunteers
who were looking to hold a vigil in memory
of the victims of Columbine
that they handed these candles off to kids
who then just torched everything.
(CROWD CHEERING)
FLEA: Hey, if you have at home or in your car,
if you have a gun,
be sure to throw it away, throw it in the garbage.
Just get the fuck rid of it.
-Don't need that shit. -(CROWD CHEERING)
MAN 1: The east stage is on fire.
-MAN 2: East Stage is still on fire? -MAN 1: Yeah, they're on fire.
Hey, they started the east stage on fire.
BEN: We started to make our way over
to Red Hot Chili Peppers, and we can see in the distance
big fires shooting up in the sky.
♪ ("UNDER THE BRIDGE" BY RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS PLAYING) ♪
♪ Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner ♪
♪ Sometimes I feel Like my only friend ♪
♪ Is the city I live in... ♪
MAN 1: Shit, it's real fire.
MAN 2: What do you guys see? What do you guys see?
Yo, the east stage, fire there with the big trucks.
-Yeah. -It's Lord of the Flies down there.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: Hey, guys, as you can see if you look behind you,
we have a bit of a problem.
Chili Peppers are gonna come back.
Calm down. We don't want anybody to get hurt.
So the fire department is gonna have to come in
with a firetruck to put the fire out.
If everybody can cooperate, we'd appreciate it.
You guys who are back there, all the way back, near the fire,
if you can hear me, back away.
MTV HOST: This is a very dangerous situation.
Everyone is trying to get out of here.
-Yes. -I think we're going to go.
JOHN: So let's back away.
Let the fire department do their job.
-Make sure nobody gets hurt. -(CROWD CHEERING)
JOSEPH GRIFFO: That night, I went to Anthony Kiedis
and said to him, "You need to help us.
We need to quell this crowd
in order to get there and take these fires down."
Holy...
Holy shit. It's Apocalypse Now out there.
Make way for the fire engine.
You wanna do it? You wanna do it?
-Fuck you! -(CROWD CHEERING)
♪ ("FIRE" BY JIMI HENDRIX PLAYING) ♪
JOSEPH: And what he did is went out
and on his encore played "Fire" from Jimi Hendrix.
♪ You don't care for me I don't-a care about that ♪
♪ You got a new fool, ha I like to laugh at ♪
♪ I have only one A-burnin' desire ♪
♪ Okay, let me stand Next to your fire ♪
♪ Let me stand Next to your fire ♪
♪ Oh, come here, girl ♪
ROB: At that point, the violence in the crowd
had already started to spread and started
-to get really destructive. -(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
ROB: All weekend long the promoters spoke a lot
about turning swords into plow shares,
but what we saw Sunday night
was a lot of turning back into swords.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES PLAYING) ♪
(ALL CHEER)
KEN: Things escalated pretty quickly.
There was tension in the air, but by the end of that set,
-it was like a powder keg. -(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KEN: We kind of graduated from, like, just trash and wood fires.
We ended up going to get into the trucks
where they had the supplies,
like the food and drinks and stuff.
And then I specifically remember,
like, one of the trucks I went into
had frozen pretzels,
so we're flinging frozen pretzels
through the fire like a bunch of idiots.
MAN: It's free! Let's go!
KEN: I had more water Sunday night during the riots
than I probably had the rest of the weekend combined.
Because we finally had access to all this stuff.
(PEOPLE CHEERING, SCREAMING)
KEN: And that night, you know,
from the Chili Peppers' set onward,
like, we had the power at that point,
like, we controlled everything that was happening
from that point forward.
It did feel like this unifying force,
like these are my people now, and we're gonna go crazy.
-(EXCLAIMS) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
KEN: And I don't know, I'm not a guy, I never in a million years
would have thought I'd somehow gotten drawn into a riot,
but, man, it just-- it was just kind of-- it just happened.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
It's like a 20-dollar fucking value box.
-MAN: How much did you pay for 'em? -Free!
-And jackets. -Free!
MAUREEN: When kids are ripping open ATM machines
with their bare hands
and lighting Mercedes-Benzes on fire,
I mean, they're telling you what they think of your greed.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(MAN WHISTLING)
KEN: I mean, it's a little concerning
that I could go from, like, a pretty mild-mannered kid
on day one and then by midnight on Sunday,
it is straight Lord of the Flies out there,
and I'm losing my damn mind like an idiot.
When in Rome, I guess, I don't know.
GUARD OVER RADIO:
GUARD 2 OVER RADIO:
MAN: Turn that fucking camera off.
MAN 2: They've got the cops here now.
GUARD OVER RADIO:
MAN: Fucking you better be worried, guy.
GUARD OVER RADIO:
JAKE: When things started to get really bad,
I had everybody turn their shirts inside out
and put their credentials down inside their shirts
because I didn't know if, you know,
we were all of a sudden gonna become targets maybe.
-(SIREN WAILING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JAKE: When the police finally did roll in,
you know, it was like hats and bats
and shields and, you know, here they came.
-Here we go. -Party's over.
POLICE OFFICER: This is outta control!
KEN: You know, we're a bunch of 20-year-old white kids,
so when we start burning a bunch of stuff down
and, like, stealing from ATMs
and just burning this whole thing down,
the riot police, they come in very polite,
you know, and just move people out.
Man, they talk about white privileges like, Jesus Christ,
like if this was a hip-hop festival in 2020
and people started burning it down,
-it would not go so nicely. -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Yeah, dude, you're the man.
JAKE: There was a sense of all the people
who were rioting for lack of a better term,
at that point, were kind of like together
in that rioting, you know. It was like,
they finally all had a sense of purpose.
Listen, look right there. See the little yellow light?
That means we've got five minutes left
till the end of Woodstock 1999.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Okay, so we have a time for one more song.
SCOTT STAPP: And then it just couldn't have been
planned better, you know, with Megadeth closing.
And closing with their tune "Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?"
♪ Peace sells But who's buying? ♪
DAVE MUSTAINE: We are in a service business.
Those of us who are troubadours.
And what's happened is along the way
the tax collector came in.
MAN 1: People are sick of being ripped off.
This was a great time, but there's no way
it was worth paying four dollars for a water.
I mean, they were all about making money off us
and we're all about getting wasted and partying.
I mean, it's just not cool and we're pissed.
You know, the question really very quickly
became, not "How could this have happened?"
But "How could it not?"
JOURNALIST: John, there was a kind
of gradual breakdown of the whole infrastructure
and as the day went on
I didn't really see much of a presence at all
of the security guards except maybe
at some of the gates.
Can you speak to that?
Where were the guards when the fires were being set?
JOHN: You know, I think I used this term then,
there were a bunch of knuckleheads.
You know? A bunch of knuckleheads
that caused those problems
and despite those problems,
the overwhelming number of people
that attended had a great time.
Really the biggest problem was that MTV set the tone
so we got killed in the press
and I didn't figure on Fred Durst inciting a riot.
-(CHUCKLES) -♪ (MILD-TEMPO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STEVEN: About three months after Woodstock '99,
the first iteration of Coachella debuts.
And you couldn't ask for a more stark
like Goofus and Gallant version of music festivals at this time.
MOBY: It was in Palm Springs, and it was balmy.
There's Bjork performing
and there's enlightened, progressive hip-hop.
Coachella '99 really was everything
Woodstock '99 should have been.
STEVEN: When people were walking in,
they were handed a free water bottle.
There was free parking. I mean,
those two things seemed like they were in direct response
to the excesses at Woodstock '99.
I will say, however, that as Coachella progresses,
and this is also true of all the big festivals now,
it's pretty clear that the power dynamics
that come into play
haven't really changed, it's just that they're cleaner.
And if you wanna assert your power,
you just have to be a really wealthy person
who can afford to be backstage and look
at all the people out there who aren't as lucky as you are.
And then you're gonna be able to take photos of yourself
and show the world that you are someone
who literally has a badge on themselves
that says, "Very Important Person."
MAUREEN: I think progress is all fits and starts, right?
It's never one direction, it's never completely linear.
And with the explosion that was Woodstock '99,
there is a definite umbilical cord
between the dark, sexual, cultural,
political underbelly in the country at that time
to where we are now.
WESLEY: A lot of that energy that was permeating that crowd that day,
it just wound up in chatrooms and Reddit boards,
and it's just fascinating to think about
because I don't know if it's possible to get
that collection of people together
in 2021 without it being a cause for concern.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STEVEN: To me, the ultimate tragedy of Woodstock '99,
is that almost all the problems that occurred that weekend
were foreseeable ahead of time, and therefore preventable.
This again speaks to the mythology of Woodstock.
That this was almost like magic fairy pixie dust
or something that you could just sprinkle...
(CHUCKLES) ...over all this poor planning
and because it was Woodstock, it would work.
But, when you take off the rose-colored glasses,
and look at Woodstock and what it actually was,
it was about sequestering yourself from society
and really living the kind of life
that wouldn't be sustained, like if we all did that.
Like if we all went into a field with no police,
do a lot of drugs and listen to rock music all day long,
I mean, things would fall apart, I think, pretty quickly.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
NEWS REPORTER 1: At the Woodstock '99 concert
in Central New York, what was supposed
to be three days of peace, love and music,
ended in a night of looting--
NEWS REPORTER 2: Commercialism,
that's what some people say led to the fall of Woodstock '99.
I mean, the kids were hungry, they were thirsty, they were--
NEWS REPORTER 3: The fires were put out this morning and most festival goers
had left the site by 9:00 a.m., but the Woodstock name
may have sustained lasting damage.
NEWS REPORTER 4: First person charged with sexual violence
at last weekend's Woodstock festival
turns out to be a New York state prison guard.
The prison guard was charged
with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.
NEWS REPORTER 5: Here's another horror story from Woodstock '99 today.
The police are now investigating four cases of women
alleging they were raped.
One woman says she was attacked right in front of the stage
as the band played on and a lot of people stood by.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHAEL: Had we programmed this more
along the lines of '94 or '69,
it would have been a different event
and attracted a different audience.
But the intention here was to do something
very contemporary,
and that's what contemporary was.
GARRET: Do you think there'll ever be another Woodstock?
There always could be another Woodstock.
I mean, I've just learned never to say never about that.
♪ ("THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT" BY THE OFFSPRING PLAYING) ♪
MICHAEL: We're taking steps to protect everybody.
We want it to be a completely safe event.
You know, there will be zero tolerance for anything,
you know, other than, you know, proper behavior.
♪ When we were young The future was so bright ♪
♪ The old neighborhood Was so alive ♪
♪ And every kid On the whole damn street ♪
♪ Was gonna make it big And not be beat ♪
♪ Now the neighborhood's cracked And torn ♪
♪ The kids are grown up But their lives are worn ♪
♪ How can one little street Swallow so many lives? ♪
♪ Chances thrown Nothing's free ♪
♪ Longing for used to be ♪
♪ Still it's hard, hard to see ♪
♪ Fragile lives Shattered dreams ♪
♪ Go! ♪
♪ Chances thrown Nothing's free ♪
♪ Longing for, used to be ♪
♪ Still it's hard, hard to see ♪
♪ Fragile lives Shattered dreams ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪